Annelies welcome, thanks for chatting with us today.
You bet!
You speak fluent Dutch. What’s a fun phrase we need to learn? Well, yes. I guess I speak fluent “Children’s Dutch”. Try this out: Je bent een echte nageaapt. You’re a real aped!
Wow! We’ll have to use that. So--you’re hoping to qualify for your first Olympic Team this winter. How’s your preparation going?
It’s been going really well. Our team is super professional-- everyone is on board. We all get along really well. Training has been fun, simple--we’re not doing anything different, it’s just getting more focused and dialed in. It’s been really fun!
Is that at all overwhelming?
No, I think it’s fun. It’s not so much that you’d even start to get conceited about it or feel special, but for me it’s a unique experience because I haven’t really done it before. I can really understand if I’d been doing this before and it’d feel like, “Ugh… this again,” but for me it’s still new and I’m like, sure why not!
How does going into an Olympic year feel different than going into any other season?
The biggest difference for me, and this could be different for Tim and Lowell, is that this is the first year that I’ve really received any attention for doing biathlon. Before, I was on the National team and it just wasn’t that big of a deal. Now all sorts of people are starting to get in touch--local magazines, NYSEF, the news channels, news networks from Park City-- it’s just a funny experience to have people care so much all of a sudden!
You said that you’ve kept your training good and simple. What sort of things are you working on with your coaches?
Right now it’s all about the details--simple things that can end up costing a lot of time. For me, shooting has been a big avenue where I can make huge improvements. If I can shoot four seconds faster per stage, that’s 8 or 12 seconds faster per race. Last year (in a World Cup in Antholz, Italy) I was 18th and I shared the same second with four other girls-- if I had been 10 seconds faster, I would have been top 10. So little things like that add up!
You have a really neat story with biathlon and cross country skiing. You made a really impressive return to the sport after being bumped from the national team. The following season you had some of your best results ever. Can you tell us about that?
Yup. So, I competed in biathlon throughout high school and was on the junior national team. I missed the 2006 Olympics, which was a reach for me--and after that IIwas burned out and went to college for 3 years with the idea of eventually returning to biathlon. I returned and made a huge bump up in training, maybe too big. It wasn’t the right fit at that time. I didn’t qualify for the National Team and my skiing was slow. I decided to give it one more year and trained for the season on my own. I went back to the basics and focused on things that worked for me in college (at the University of Utah). After that season I qualified to go to Europe, compete in World Cups, qualified for World Championships-- it was amazing.
Any superpower?
I’d love to fly. Flying would be pretty cool.
What makes biathlon the coolest sport ever?
It’s so darn hard to get right! Haha. You really have to put all these little pieces together. If you want to get to the top in biathlon and excel, it takes a long time. There’s always something that can go right in biathlon, and that keeps you coming back, yet there’s always something that goes wrong and keeps you from landing in the perfect place. It’s so easy to keep on trying and trying and working at it. So the one day where everything goes right-- it’s a magical feeling. And it doesn’t happen often!
Tell us a cool story from your NYSEF days.
We used to go up onto Heaven Hill and play capture the flag… these epic games! We’d split up, me, Tim, Lowell and all these little kids. We’d split up and play these wild games that would go on for hours. Tim and Lowell would have a minute to run and hide the flag, and then we’d be in the woods for what seemed like hours. I’d be crawling around on the ground an inch at a time because I’d get so nervous. And we’d all be covered in mud and war paint. I loved my NYSEF days!
Thanks Annelies and congrats on your first Olympic Games in Sochi!
Annelies (center) teaches the next generation of NYSEF atheltes how to rollerski
